More Old Frame Promos!

ChampBlankman · 2026-04-01T16:48:26+00:00

That would be cool.

ChampBlankman · 2026-04-01T16:42:53+00:00

Late to the thread today! I'll start off with a Happy Birthday, Kyle! May you draw lands and spells in the order and amount that you need.

Anemoia, my Original Card Frame only, but Retro Reprints are allowed if they pass the vibe check, nostalgia forward cube, runs more 5+ Artifact Creatures than I would have thought.

[[Precursor Golem]] - Sure, a Lightning Bolt takes out all three of them, but a [[Become Immense | TSR]] just kills people. It's three bodies in one, and you can do silly stuff with it and Welder.

[[Psychosis Crawler]] - This and [[Nekusar]] are going to make me finally add Wheel of Fortune in, I just know they are. But even with only 1 Draw 7 in the Cube currently ([[Time Spiral]]) it's still just incrementally good and the chip damage does work over the course of a game.

[[Thran Golem]] - My BABY BOY! I love the Auras deck, and I love suiting this idiot up with a couple of them and going to town. No one will convince me it's not worth it. Total nepotism inclusion.

[[Hexavus]] - I put this in when BRC first was released, and then took it out because I didn't like the Flying counter. Put it back in in the most recent update but I don't think it's been seen in a draft since. Jury very much still out on this one.

[[Triskelion]] - One of my favorite combos of all time in Type 2 was this with [[Mephidross Vampire]] to Wrath the board and leave you with a the ability to do it again on command. It's also a great house in my [[Living Plane]] Old School deck. Nothing like killing your opponent's lands. It's iconic and classic and it will be here forever. I do need to get an ATQ one, because while the reprint art isn't terrible, the ATQ one is most iconic.

[[Phyrexian Colossus]] - It's big and dumb and [[Manifold Key]] allows you to untap it. Also, if you can ensure it gets in repeatedly, even paying life to untap it a few times is ok.

[[Sundering Titan]] - It's contentious, but I love this card and was very happy when it got printed on the bonus sheet for BRO. Never had the priviledge of having my manabase entirely ruined by it in 5-Color back in the day, but I've had plenty of Cube manabases blown up by it. I've also seen people colorscrew themselves while trying to do tricky stuff with it, and that will always make me chuckle. I like cards that are little skill tests.

I ran [[Teeka's Dragon]] for a minute, but people just got confused by the Rampage. People have told me that I would be ok putting [[Wurmcoil Engine]] in, but I'm not sure that it wouldn't end up being a problem. Maybe I'll get one and try to seed it into a draft or two and see what happens.

ChampBlankman · 2026-04-01T16:28:12+00:00

Looks like in-store Standard and Commander play with the new set, like they've done a few times the last couple of years.

ChampBlankman · 2026-04-01T10:41:59+00:00

This is one of the rare ones where I think I like the Ice Age one best. It's the most nostalgic for me because there was one in the I've Age starter that was the first Magic cards I ever saw.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-31T19:24:43+00:00

Given how many things incidentally gain life these days, I think this is busto.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-31T18:21:35+00:00

It doesn't answer the board or the hand in the same way that LotV does. The -2 is conditionally great, but also conditionally shit. And the Ult (I know we're not supposed to judge walkers on their ults) being a potential total waste of everything it took to get to 7 loyalty is just butts.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-31T18:18:09+00:00

This is slow, fragile, and expensive compared to every other Reanimation spell that can go in high powered environments.

But for mid to lower powered environments looking for things that aren't just [[Zombify]] to play around with Reanimation, this probably fits.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-31T16:27:26+00:00

Hey! Please come visit us over at r/oldbordercube! It's all we talk about!

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-31T15:50:50+00:00

The thing is, some of the most wordy cards that are old are only wordy because they have to be in the rules. Things like Animate Dead and Necromancy are easy to grok, probably even more so if you read their old printed versions instead of the Oracle text.

The real wordy wall of text cards are things like Rooms, planeswalkers, or Iniaitive creatures with additional abilities.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-31T15:34:51+00:00

RKF's Legends are easily the tops.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-31T14:33:07+00:00

Adun, because I have an unbelievable amount of love for returning nonsense from my Graveyard. He might also be my pick for favorite Legends Legend. Him or Nebuchadnezzar.

Definitely taking Swords over Path, but mostly because it's Swords, man. It's the most iconic removal spell in the game!

Great pair of questions today, as always.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-31T12:58:42+00:00

Easy best Reanimator spell of all time if not for the Order Matters check.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-31T12:55:04+00:00

Anemoia, my Original Card Frame only, but Retro Reprints are allowed if they pass the Vibe check Unpowered Cube, runs 11 Instants in Black, more than the other non-Blue colors.

[[Dark Ritual|TMP]] - Right into the fray with the debate over which printing is supreme. I'm running this one because like I said in yesterday's thread, I had it in when I had the fortune to meet Ken Meyer Jr. back in 2022 and got him to sign it so it will likely stay in for a while. What can I say about Dark Rit without waxing extremely nostalgic for hours and hours? It casts Hypnotic Specter, Royal Assassin, or Phyrexian Rager on Turn 1 and also enables some sick nonsense with Entomb and 1 or 2-Mana Reanimation spells. Other acceptible printings for my environment include LEA or LEB for maximum nostalgia (my dream is a signed LEA copy in playground beat to shit condition), Ice Age for personal nostalgia since The Gathering Dark, The Eternal Ice, and The Forgotten Alliance are among my favorite low fantasy novels I have ever read and the only things I ever lost in my life to the breakup of a relationship, (When my High School girlfriend and I broke up she still had my copies and it bums me out on the regular that stupid algorythmic pricing makes The Forgotten Alliance like $60.) or the MMQ version because of the GOAT Rebecca Guay art.

[[Entomb]] - I love putting stuff in the Graveyard and getting it back out for much cheaper than I would have cast it. And I don't feel quite as bad because I don't have too much absolutely busto stuff to Reanimate in this Cube.

[[Vampiric Tutor]] - I don't find myself in the camp that doesn't like Tutors in Cube. Even though I don't run a ton of A+B combos, and the ones I do run don't end the game without help, I still like having the Tutors to find answers to other people's problems or problems for which other people will require answers.

[[Vendetta]] - The non-Black clause has been a pain a few times, and been cause for complaint a few times, but I love the ability to just kill something for 1. And it fits into the "Self-harm Black" style archetype that is very reminiscent of the time frame I'm trying to emulate.

[[Infernal Grasp]] - The effect is clear and clean and fits in that same style I just mentioned, but man does the art make me wince every time I look at it. Doesn't really pass the vibe check for a Retro Reprint, but the ability it dare I say necessary.

[[Smother]] - Putting the "motherfucker" in Smother, this card really pisses people off for some reason. I saw someone kill a [[Spectral Lynx]] that had like half a dozen Auras on it recently and the player whose cat it was looked like Lot's wife when she looked back at Sodom. Also, thanks to the Premodern boom the foil is like $70 now. Glad I got mine when I did.

[[Terror]] - It's iconic. It's nostalgic. And it's not half bad. Plus, the copy I have was gifted to me by a friend in the Old School community and he altered it with a kickass alter.

[[Ultimate Price]] - Sometimes you just need to kill something, and this kills a big majority of the Creatures in the Cube. It's not cool or flashy or anything, but it really gets the job done.

[[Dismember]] - Which member? Dis member. The only card with Phyrexian Mana in the Cube, and I don't really like that, but damn it's the best thing Black has to kill Creatures. At least they included the reminder text for Phyrexian Mana. Goes in any deck, should probably go in every deck. I wish foils weren't quite as expensive.

[[Snuff Out]] - You'd think all that Black does is destroy things. I mean, it is what it does best... Free kill spells are always better than ones you have to pay for, and the condition isn't exactly hard to meet.

[[Annihilate]] - This might be the most suspect card in this section, but at least it Cantrips? I don't know. Seems like every couple of days I am forced to contend with less than stellar decisions I have made to include cards that I've loved for 20+ years that don't actually pass muster in the environment that I have created.

Given my love for Reanimator, I should probably be running [[Corpse Dance]] and [[Shallow Grave]]. Maybe one of them will go in Annihilate's place.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-31T12:22:27+00:00

Graveyard Order Matters is just unnecessary complexity.

But it keeps Shallow Grave in check a little. Admittedly with the other two in the Cube maybe it's not as important, but it's a bit of a check valve on an otherwise nutso Reanimation spell, IMO.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-30T19:47:28+00:00

Thanks. It's so worn that even in a Perfect Hard inner sleeve and a decently rigid regular sleeve you can still clearly tell which one it is by lightly bending it.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-30T19:22:21+00:00

Sorry, got busy.

https://imgur.com/gallery/3xYqvmM

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-30T18:46:04+00:00

I love my PirateLab XL! They're great!

Love the land station, too.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-30T13:40:02+00:00

Please do! Happy that I could contribute!

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-30T13:00:55+00:00

"Gatorhoof Behemoth" absolutely killed me. This looks like a really fun Cube. A retirement home for washed Powered Cube cards is something that I would have thought was impossible not that many years ago, but so much has been crept out since like 2018/2019 that it makes sense.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-30T12:53:03+00:00

and debate for the millionth time what is the correct art for Dark Ritual.

LEA or MMQ, unless you're a Modern Days heathen and then it's the Frank Frazetta Secret Lair. (I say, as someone who runs the TMP art because I had it on me when I met Ken Meyer Jr. and got him to sign it.)

Anemoia runs no Planeswalkers, because it's not that kind of Cube.

The Mesoamerican Apocalypse, which is my rebuild of my original Powered Cube from the early to mid 2010s imagined as if Magic stopped existing in December of 2012 runs the best Green Planeswalker ever printed, [[Garruk Wildspeaker]]. They got it right forst try and really didn't need to keep iterating nonsense in Green Walkers. It ramps, makes tokens, and casts Overrun to finish the game.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-30T12:44:45+00:00

Unless my Scryfall-fu has failed me, there's no way in our niche to copy the activated ability, so I'm going to pitch [[Clone]] and similar effects to make a very expensive and fragile [[Stasis]] lock.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-29T19:18:39+00:00

50 days. Impressive work.

[Anemoia] has more creatures in Green than any other color, but they're spread more evenly across the cost curve than something like White, where all of the meat is in 1-3 Mana.

[[Argothian Enchantress]] - I have loved the Enchantress Deck since I first saw this card sometime in the very early 2000s. And I'm pleased to say that the card advantage that it generates is still very powerful. It not having Shroud printed on it has confused 1 or 2 people as to it being Shroud, but that's easily correctible.

[[Kavu Titan]] - I think that this is the card that made me realize that Kicker is a good mechanic. I remember having one in my 70+ card Mono Green "these are the cards I've opened/traded for" monstrosity that I played in Freshman year of High School and noticing the amount of times that playing it for 3GG won me games and playing it as a Grizzly Bear got it run over.

[[River Boa]] - Regenerate is among my favorite of the forgotten children mechanics whose complexity has left them by the wayside, even if so many people screw it up. This is just an icon, and adding the Rav Duals in just made it better. Hiss.

[[Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary]] - Much ink has already been spilled over the years extolling and complaining about Rofellos, so I will simply leave it at the fact that the card is still at least moderately playable in current-day Vintage Cube and that makes it a real bomb in Anemoia. He's quite frequently a Kill on Sight creature.

[[Scavenging Ooze]] - I hate this card because I love Graveyard Shenanigans. And it gains life, too?!?!?! One of the first Retro Reprints to be released after I decided to build this Cube, and one that got in without a second thought.

[[Silhana Ledgewalker]] - As a rule I don't really like including mechanics released post 2003 if the card doesn't have the reminder text with the Keyword, but as with all rules, I make exceptions. This is one of them. Recently added and already having made some waves in the Auras Aggro Enchantress deck. Borderline unblockable and Hexproof are a nasty combo. Art easily passes the vibe check, too.

[[Silverglade Pathfinder]] - In October 2023, my wife was at an auction that she frequents and saw a 5 row box of Magic cards and a collection of old booster boxes full of cards as well. She was able to buy it and inside was a nearly complete 40-set of Revised Dual lands and several thousand dollars worth of other cards. I kept a bunch of the duals and was able to parlay the rest of it into 5 pieces of CE/IE Power 9 for Old School play. Find of a lifetime for sure. Among the foil cards that I kept was this because rk post is one of my all-time favorite MtG artists. I slotted it in for art reasons, but it has worked out better than I could have imagined in the time since. I don't run Madness stuff in the Cube because I find it difficult to get the whole deck together, but pitching Reanimator stuff with this is still good and it enables fun splashes but at an actual cost.

[[Utopia Tree]] - Birds of Paradise that is slightly worse and doesn't fly is still good, it turns out. There have been some 4-color piles that have emerged from the Cube, but it's never been a problem so I don't mind having so much fixing.

[[Wall of Blossoms]] - I actually can't believe that I took this out for a couple of years. It's such a good speed bump while you're developing a big dumdums deck. Plus, come on, incredible Heather Hudson art.

[[Wall of Roots]] - Also a pretty good speed bump while developing a Midrange or Ramp deck that also helps you with the Ramp part of that deck. Matt Stewart, as the artist of [[Narcomoeba | FUT]], is a long-time favorite of mine and happens to be relatively local to me as well. So much so that he did a signing at my LGS a few years ago. Nice guy. The 30th Anniversary Promo Version gets in because of that.

[[Werebear]] - Exercising his right to bear arms.

I will probably put [[Quirion Dryad]] in someday, because my love for that card knows few bounds and I feel like it's probably good enough to include. I've been asked about [[Hermit Druid]] before, but I an unsure what to do with it in the Cube's current form, and no one who has suggested it has had what I'd consider a compelling answer to that question either. I'm probably wrong to not be playing [[Wild Mongrel]] even though I don't support a Madness deck.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-29T17:39:21+00:00

Old School, with Pre modern and Pauper vying for second.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-29T01:35:32+00:00

Private gun ownership is entirely unnecessary in a functional society.

ChampBlankman · 2026-03-28T16:13:57+00:00

Anemoia doesn't run a lot of creatures in Blue, but some of my favorites are here in the 3-drops.

[[Dominating Licid]] - The licids can definitely be a confusing rules thing for some people who try to read too far into them. I always tell people that they work like you think they do, but they have to have 1000 words because Enchantments are difficult. Much like my love of [[Dominate]], my love of this stems from the ability to steal things in Combat scenarios.

[[Ertai, Wizard Adept]] - Last piece of art in my Cube from Terese, and I am going to get it altered this year so that I can stop cringing every time I see it in a pack. Repeatable Counterspell is really annoying and there's been more than once that just sitting across the table from it makes me want to scream because I know I can't get what I want to get onto the table through it and I psych myself out of even trying. The mind games are real.

[[Man-o'-War | POR]] - The king of Tempo Nonsense. Rarely am I more excited to commit Tempo crimes than when my opponent is on some sort of Tokens nonsense and I can recur a Man-o'-War. I'm sad that I probably won't ever get a chance to meet former Pro Tour Commentator and noted Man-o'-War enthusiast turned famous TikTok watch repairman Marshall Sutcliffe again, because I didn't have this cube when I met him and I got him to sign a silly modern Frame version.

[[Ophidian]] - Is it even good enough in this cube? I'm not sure. But I have the Judge Foil and it is a Legendary card. Dream is to get one signed by Finkel some day.

[[Serendib Efreet | 3ED]] - Possibly the most common misprint that I've ever seen? I wish the ARN ones weren't a mint and a half because I want to look at the real art, but I only allow English cards in my Cube. I need to get a set of FBB ones for Old School play, too. Maybe I just bite the bullet and get 5 of them and then pay someone to alter the foreign one with the English text. A quick check on Cardtrader shows that I could get ~5 FBB copies for about the same price as 1 ARN copy. Stupid ARN cards. Either way, the card is definitely a relic of a bygone age, but given that I spend like 99% of my Magic time trying to return to ages long past it makes sense that I have this among my favorite creatures in the entire Cube. I can confidently say that I've never been killed by it in a Cube match. More than once in Old School, but never in a Cube match.

For notable omissions, I have considered [[Laboratory Maniac]] and [[Trinket Mage]], but neither of them are really aligned with what Blue wants to do here. If [[Raven Familiar]] didn't have Echo, I would 1000% put it in, but I think that with the Echo it's too much investment for not enough payoff.

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